It has always been a value of mine to do things for a reason. Doing everything in honest and whole-heartedly has allowed me to see life clearly and get lost in some of the simplest but most beautiful moments. Have you ever just sat and watched the wind blow through a tree’s leaves? This captivates me. Being purposeful doesn’t mean counting your eggs before they hatch or having an intended purpose going into something but to do something with no drawbacks. If I want to read I will read and not text at the same time. If I tell someone thank you I make sure I mean it first. It takes a bit more effort to be entirely truthful and cognizant of everything you’re doing. Yet I feel free knowing I am living in acceptance of who I am. I am a human living everyday, I am vulnerable but there is beauty around me I can accept if I choose too. It all seems a bit existential at times but it has allowed me to be present. Every moment is precious. It will never come again so I should value it. Here are three different examples of purposeful present-ness I have experienced the past few weeks.
1. The movie Marina Abaramovic: The Artist Is Present. Click here to see a preview. A documentary about one of the most famous performance artist, Abaramovic. Performance art is something entirely different than anything I’ve ever experienced. It pushes all levels of comfort and can be a powerful tool to convey social messages. To provide an example, Abaramovic once stood in a public area where she did not move for six hours. Around her were 72 objects passerby could do whatever they wanted with to her, from putting flowers in her hair to shooting the loaded pistol she left as an object. The performance turned into a scene far too similar to the Zimbardo Prison Experiment, but proves a clear message about the human condition. The documentary however focuses on her most recent performance at MoMA (Museum of Modern Art) called “The Artist is Present” where Abaramovic sat at a table with two chairs in a white space for three months, every hour MoMa was open (736.5 hours). She, with the same expression, stared deeply into who ever sat in the chair across from her; all were welcomed to. This is incredibly purposeful. Abaramovic using the medium of eye contact connected with people who were in desperate need of a listener. Many cried, some came back again. This revealed the human connection, the human vulnerability. The power of being present for someone has on us. Listening for someone not through you ears but through your soul.
2. The Postal Service aka getting a letter or package in the mail. Nothing says I was thinking about you and care about you more than a real hand-written letter. I write a letter once a month, sometimes I get a letter back, most often a text saying thanks for the letter and sometimes nothing at all. I keep sending them though. Letters travel over physical ground it takes human effort to get your letter directly to you. I strongly suggest trying to write a letter to someone you care about and as you write don’t get involved in the “I did this I did that” think about what these moments mean to you, how they connect, think about the wind in the trees. Beautiful things come from the mail. Consider the band The Postal Service. The two member would keep adding to a track from different parts of the country and send them back and forth via the Postal Service.
3. Walden Pond a good friend and I went to visit Walden Pond in Massachusetts as a homage to the great Henry David Thoreau (my creative interpretation here). The location of Thoreau’s house is set back from a now heavily-touristed pond. Yet the site of his home seems oddly calm and quite with the hum of cars and muffled beach-boom-box radio songs. My friend and I sat and read Walden it felt so purposeful to sit and read about what was directly in front of me. Yet it also made me aware of the raw reality of the stark difference between what I was reading and what I saw. Thoreau explained strawberry and blackberries growing around his home that is now just a dry opening in a pretty cleared out forest. As much as the world has changed. I found myself brought back to the present by the relevance Thoreau’s word still has today.
“If men would steadily observe realities only, and not allow themselves to be deluded, life, to compare it with such things as we know, would be like a fairy tale and the Arabian Nights’ entertainments. If we respected only what is inevitable and has a right to be, music and poetry would resound along the streets. When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence,-that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality.”
Dani Walczak 